Xena & Gabrielle Journal
This was a very complicated high relief cover. This book was commissioned by a client who wanted both Xena and Gabrielle motifs as well as fabric from both Lucy Lawless' and Renee O'Connor's Xena costumes on a single book. This book was roughly 8.5" x11" and had blank, lined pages. It was handsewn and was a rather thick book (about 1 inch thick; roughly 200 pages). I wanted the front and back covers to go together, while still being two separate designs. So I went with an overall "circle with an X through it" theme. The front had a raised "X & G" design with the "X" being similar to the Xena logo "X". This design is raised, under the black pigskin leather of the cover. It was gold-leafed by hand and sealed with a gold-leaf sealer. In the center of the letters is a recessed circle with a yin-yang "new chakram" design. The silver outer circle is one of the real metal rings used to make Lucy Lawless' Xena main hero costume; it is one of the rings used to attach her shoulder strap to her leather bodice. The silver ring is permanently mounted on the cover and actually wired into the cover with half-round copper wire that was treated with museum-quality wax to prevent tarnishing. In the center of the circle is a yin-yang chakram design. One half of the design is made of Lucy's real Xena costume leather. The other half of the design is made from Gabrielle's real rust/orange season 5 skirt fabric. These raised pieces are mounted on a piece of inlaid tan goatskin. The back cover features a raised and recessed "original chakram" design with two crossed sais. The sais may have been one of the highest relief designs I've ever done on a cover since the right sai is a higher relief than the left one in order to make it appear as if the right one is laid on top of th left one. The handles of the sais were wrapped with leather to give them the traditional wrapped sai texture UNDER the leather of the cover. The back cover was silver-leafed by hand and sealed with silver-leaf sealer. The areas on the chakram that would have been inlaid with paua shell in real life feature circles of the real black-gold fabric used for Lucy's main Xena hero costume underskirt. This fabric was attached to raised buttons which were then permanently attached to the cover. The spine was stamped with the title using moveable metal type and gold hot foil stamping. The endpaper was a lovely handmade mottled black and brown Nepalese paper (which is, unfortunately, no longer available). I wanted something that looked ancient for the endpapers. This was a complex cover. It was a challenge to create a design with so many different elements and colors that still went together well as a whole.
A book like this could only be quoted on a per-order basis.